Here’s How Much It’ll Cost to Watch NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube

UPDATE: Get out your wallets: Google has revealed pricing for its NFL Sunday Ticket offering.

If you have a YouTube TV subscription, a Base Plan for the whole season will be $349, though you can lock in a $249 rate for the first year if you purchase during the presale, which ends on June 6. A bundle that also adds NFL RedZone is $389, or $289 during the presale.

Don’t have YouTube TV? NFL Sunday Ticket is $449 for the season ($349 presale) or $489 for the NFL Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone bundle ($389 presale) via Primetime Channels.

The Base Plan includes every Sunday game, including local, national, and out-of-market games. Google says people should see an option to sign up over the next few days.

“New and existing YouTube TV members will be able to add NFL Sunday Ticket as an add-on, and viewers who purchase through Primetime Channels can do so in several places across YouTube, such as the Movies & TV hub, NFL’s channel and watch page, and search results,” Google says(Opens in a new window).

Original Story 12/22/22:
NFL Sunday Ticket will move from satellite-first to streaming-first distribution under a multiple-year deal the league(Opens in a new window) and Google(Opens in a new window) announced on Thursday, ending a 28-year run by DirecTV. 

Starting with the 2023 NFL season, that pricey package of out-of-market Sunday-afternoon pro football games will be an option on YouTube TV, Google’s $65/month live TV streaming service, and YouTube Primetime Channels, a storefront for third-party services.

Neither announcement specifies what YouTube viewers will pay to add the Sunday Ticket, but the $293.94 rate DirecTV listed for the 2022 season(Opens in a new window) suggests a floor for that cost. Those releases also don’t say what Google will pay the NFL for the rights or how many years the deal covers, but CNBC reported Thursday(Opens in a new window) that YouTube will pay about $2 billion a year for seven years.

The New York Times confirmed the seven-year timeframe(Opens in a new window) but cited a higher potential value of $2.5 billion a year that factored in possible side deals for streaming in bars and restaurants.

NFL fans without sufficient bandwidth for streaming appear to be out of luck. But broadband-deprived bars may be able to keep Sunday Ticket games on if the NFL follows the pattern it set after Amazon paid a reported $1 billion a year(Opens in a new window) for exclusive Thursday Night Football rights: The league inked a backup deal with DirecTV(Opens in a new window) to bring those games to those establishments. 

Sunday Ticket had been a DirecTV exclusive since 1994(Opens in a new window) and a key part of its appeal in the pay-TV market. The satellite broadcaster did not offer streaming viewers any way to watch until 2010(Opens in a new window), and as late as 2014 it limited that option to a subset of residences physically incapable of satellite reception. 

As DirecTV has made streaming more central to its business, those restrictions have gone away but the service has still struggled, with its streams of the first few games of the 2022 season marred by glitches(Opens in a new window).

With DirecTV’s most recent deal set to end after the 2022 season, a year after AT&T undid its disastrous purchase of the company by spinning it off to the private-equity group TPG(Opens in a new window), the NFL had made its preference for streaming clear when Commissioner Roger Goodell called that “best for consumers at this stage”(Opens in a new window) at a conference in July. 

Amazon, Apple, and Google looked like the most likely bidders at that point. Apple (which in June signed a 10-year deal with Major League Soccer that covers every MLS game) then appeared closest to the end zone until the NFL balked at its demands(Opens in a new window) for wider availability of Sunday Ticket games.

Google could apparently live with keeping the current limits, which will leave watching NFL games(Opens in a new window), especially via streaming, as Byzantine as ever. A particularly dedicated fan will need Amazon Prime Video plus a live pay-TV bundle that includes ESPN, NFL Network, and their local CBS, Fox and NBC stations. Although an antenna can get local broadcasts for free, while Paramount+ and Peacock can replace CBS and NBC local channels in this scenario and ESPN+ will do the same for ABC and ESPN next season. And that would still leave Sunday Ticket required if this fan also wants to watch out-of-market games in what’s left of their Sunday afternoons.